


tit for tat (save me and I'll save you)

by creampuffs



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-21 11:19:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1548695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creampuffs/pseuds/creampuffs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As if your whole life had been waiting for it, it finally happened so that the only way to stay alive was to be experimented on. In the biggest twist of irony, any and all hope of your continued survival rested solely upon GLaDOS surgically modifying you. And she did exactly that. </p><p>an exploration into neural handshakes (inspired from Pacific Rim) and the aftermath of Portal 2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The first time she plugs into you, the flashes of bright colors in your vision and the quick stream of data that flows into your consciousness is enough to knock you out. Like foam gathering at the top of a carbonated beverage, lines of binary code and white noise flood your senses. You liken it to a concussion, with less associative pain and more surprise, before passing out completely.

When you awaken, you feel different right away. A low thrum of electricity runs through your body, introducing a foreign sensation and while it's a little exciting, it's mostly terrifying. You have grown to become incredibly wary of all new circumstances. You feel around towards the back of your head to find a small embedded port and metal plate. A thin film of alkyd and metallic aftertaste sits inside your mouth, and you run your tongue over your teeth before you're interrupted by a dry laugh.

Her chassis shines under the simulated daylight of the chamber and there's no mistaking the mocking tone of voice when the clipped, mechanized drawl addresses you.

"You can barely process as many volts as a potato. I imagined the...extra mass," and here the voice dips while her optic focuses on your face, "...would have cushioned some of the electrical currents but to no surprise, you have failed too in that small respect."

Still, when she pulls closer to examine you, there is a slight change to her tone, almost imperceptible but after studying her voice and mannerisms for so long (intentionally or not), it's hard not to notice it.

"Well? Is there pain in the area?" A perfectly medical question, cursory and to the point, but there is an inflection that reminds you of the sharp way she gasped (a strange mimicry of inhalation, though you know machines do not breathe air) when you awoke for the first time after launching Wheatley into space. You focus on your body again, experimentally flexing your fingers and moving your eyes about the room. You walk just fine and everything feels the way it should, with the exception of course that your brain was now only 60% organic matter and running on pure mechanics and circuitry. You face her again, her yellow optic burning straight into you, and shrug.

"I'll take the fact that you're not howling like a monkey on the ground as an affirmative that everything is running smoothly in that murderous head of yours. Of course the processor wouldn't fail since I designed it myself but there was no promise in how your oxygenated body would accept it. "

GLaDOS pulls back, noiselessly lifting herself high above you. Before you know it, your fingers are touching the back of your head again, still unused to the feeling of plated metal, steel, and silicone under your hair. When you opened that portal to space, you were acting on sheer instinct, the same instinct that told you to aim portal to portal as you hurtled over 30 feet in the air. It's hard to say you made the right choice though, as those few seconds in space were enough to irreparably damage your brain. For real this time. You lost function in nearly half your body and central nervous system, turning you, for all intensive purposes, into a comatose vegetable. The last thing you could remember was the grip of mechanical claw as GLaDOS pulled you back towards the white walls of Aperture.

As if your whole life had been waiting for it, it finally happened so that the only way to stay alive was to be experimented on. In the biggest twist of irony, any and all hope of your continued survival rested solely upon GLaDOS surgically modifying you. And she did exactly that. Part of you is still trying to place your feelings about having been completely powerless about the fate of your own body. All of you is totally sick of how frequently this seems to happen. There is also something equally unnerving about the way she simply cut you open and went ahead with that medical surprise she had once joked about.

You wonder why she didn't just let you die.

She swings herself to the side and the tiles on the walls flutter around her, flipping over to be replaced with monitors displaying charts and a constantly changing grid of your physiological state. Blood pressure, oxygen levels, and brain activity are all included and you watch in morbid fascination as the numbers fluctuate, indicating a mix of chemical content and voltage.

"Optimal and continued brain functions require you to be charged for approximately three hours a day. A full charge will last you around the equivalent of a days worth, almost twenty-one complete hours. In the case that you miss a charge, your brain will automatically enter safety mode, in which all major core processes will be running at minimum speed to preserve memory and storage. Instructions so simple even you should be able to grasp them."

It's a jab at you and she poses it like she's daring you to challenge her. You watch the charts for a moment longer before turning to the front of her face again. She's tilted her head down to gaze at you, and you are reminded of just how massive she is in comparison. You want to ask why she even bothered to save you, or what she hopes to do with you now that she's essentially been promised a test subject for the next few years. You want to ask many things. Psychological trauma and identity crisis aside, you're in a seriously bizarre scenario now that the landscape for your life has more or less been gridlocked. You figure you can afford to take things slow this time. Before you begin to gesture or allude to any questions though, she interrupts you with more information.

"Of course, you'll be coming to my main chamber to be charged. Surely even you are aware that there's nowhere else you could be administered such a precise level of electricity. Your tiny brain can hardly handle even the smallest increase in dosage. In layman's terms, you'll return every evening for three hours to be charged for the next day." Her optic whirrs rapidly as she focuses on your face again, "Are you even listening?"

It's hard to describe but in that moment, a combination of her tone and the way her iris changes in size almost imply that she's as tired by the whole ordeal as you are. It wasn't too long ago that she was trapped in a potato after all, speared on the end of your gun while you tore your way up the facility. You nod, more or less remembering all the important details while still managing to remain floating in a state of disbelief. GLaDOS has brought you back to life, but at the cost of being tied to her chassis, to the labs of Aperture, and to science.

...still, you are alive. You are breathing, though the parts of your body that tell you so are now being controlled by something other.

The elevator hisses as it slides into the room, a familiar sound as the doors open up. She's still facing you and the silence stretches for a moment before she turns around, signaling the end of the conversation. You step into the elevator and get sent down several hundred feet before it opens again, revealing a single furnished room. It's bare and carries only the essentials, with a bed and an alarm clock, eerily similar in design to the relaxation chamber. There is no art this time though, and the walls are empty. You sleep again, not because your mechanized circuits are tired (to the contrary, they are fully powered and ready) but because your more human needs prevail. You fall into a deep sleep, a sleep for the mind, and not for the body.

 

* * *

You have no idea what time it is when you wake up again. The numbers on the alarm clock beside you have never meant anything, and have only ever been useful when seen in a test chamber to dictate how many seconds you had to perform a difficult maneuver. You swing your legs over the bed and stare at the television screen that hangs from the ceiling, a single display that offers a compact version of the charts you remember from GLaDOS' chamber. As far as you can tell, all functions are running normally, and the paper thin beat of your heart from the speakers blend seamlessly into the constructed ambience of the room.

You breathe deeply and think. Any and all hope for freedom is effectively gone. GLaDOS had stated, point blank, that continued survival meant you couldn't leave the facility even if you wanted. When you had completed all the test chambers, you had never thought of what you'd do with your freedom once you got it. It was simple enough at the time. Survive, succeed, and be liberated. GLaDOS was the aggressor, you were the compromised, and freedom was the reward. Things got complicated when you woke up years later and replaced her core with Wheatley, but the formula still stayed the same more or less, only with different variables. Wheatley was the aggressor, you and GLaDOS were the compromised, and freedom remained the reward.

That equation isn't particularly useful anymore though. The playing field is completely demolished now, and it's become clear that it was never again going to be just you and a supercomputer AI. No, there is a third party now, quiet and maybe unwanted, but Caroline is a voice that lingers. She is the saving grace between the two of you, and it's weird to think that a dead person is the only reason why your corpse isn't drifting off in space.

What options do you have?

Well, you could refuse to live in this circumstance. After all, a processor can only survive for so long without a charge, safety mode engaged or not. You imagine that it'd be similar to a long sleep, painless and easy. Something in you objects to this though, a strong tug in your mind that refuses to surrender. If you had managed to find a loophole while sliding towards a fiery death, you want to believe that there is a loophole here too. You are intelligent, but not a genius and unless GLaDOS was lying (which is possible, but unlikely given her new development of a conscious), if even she cant develop a piece of hardware to keep you alive for longer stretches of time, then you are stuck indefinitely with your limitations.

Okay, fine, so your options suck.

You breathe slower, rubbing your eyes and finally getting up to wash your face. As the water hits your hands, you push yourself to think harder. Tenacity is what got you this far, and to be completely honest, surviving is the best thing you know how to do. There's too little you know about death to consider it an option and somehow, every struggle you've faced up to this point makes it harder to submit to something as final as complete surrender. You've practically lived your whole life in Aperture, whatever childhood you can remember hanging on by a single thread in your bleached memory, and the thought of dying in the very place that trapped you for all this time is simply unbearable. You feel more alert now, thanks to the cool water, but as you towel off with a starched white towel, the sound of your heartbeat gets cut by the intercom.

"Excellent. You've successfully wasted three hours of your newly charged battery by sleeping. If you had wanted to waste my time earlier today, you could have just asked. I'm sure those three hours couldn't have been spent more usefully. Who needs time to be fixing the facility and running maintenance checks anyways?"

The door to you room slides open and you are startled, but immediately spring into action by grabbing your Portal gun by the bedside and aiming it at your intruder. Blue and Orange blink in surprise, throwing their arms up in the air in an oddly human gesture of compliance before their single eyes blink rapidly at you.

"Oh, what's this? You're planning murder again? What a surprise. If you would take a break from your deranged behavior for a second, Blue and Orange will escort you to your first testing chamber for the day." Your stomach clenches at the word 'testing' and you glare accusingly at the camera built into the corner of the room.

"You didn't think I would let you waste your remaining battery life on an activity as useless as sleeping, did you? Because that would be thoughtless. Even for you."

You don't speak but you don't have to, the betrayal and anger in your eyes surpass any combination of words. From your peripheral vision you see Blue and Orange drop their arms again, their joints whirring before they look at each other uncertainly. You're halfway through admonishing yourself for ever having believed GLaDOS had changed when she speaks again, terse and staccato, as if every word is the equivalent of pulling out a tooth.

"...okay. So the tests are less lethal. No acid pits. Or fully loaded turrets. Or god forbid, poorly constructed walls of spikes." The distaste in her voice is apparent, and you briefly remember Wheatley and his questionable experiments with traps. "But you can begin thanking me for saving your life by doing the only thing you're good at. Testing. That is, ignoring for a moment your astonishing ability for killing sprees, destroying perfectly functioning Aperture equipment, and disobeying standard protocol and warnings while remaining wholly unlovable."

There is a moment of pause as you try to reconcile this new information with your past history of life-threatening test chambers.

"Also overweight", she tacks on helpfully.

Okay so the fat jokes are still there, adding some measure of normalcy. You suppose even the loudest and kindest human conscience in her programming probably couldn't keep that on hold. You wonder if Caroline suffered any self-esteem issues.

"...well. Don't just stand there. Contrary to popular human belief, no one will ever be as enthralled by your slow and private internal thinking processes as you are. Blue, Orange, take her to the first test chamber." They nod in compliance and reanimate themselves, pushing you eagerly out the door with your portal gun still in hand. You contemplate resistance but the thought of it isn't very tempting, and to be honest, you are a little curious about what a test chamber looks like when she's not actively designing them to end your life. They nudge you left and right, and the grey halls of Aperture are as spotless and empty as they've ever been. It's a relatively short walk, and when the semi-circle doors reveal themselves to you and open in a hiss of air, you're hit with a punch of deja vu.

For starters, she wasn't lying about the lack of acid pits. Or the spiked walls. You see a row of red lines from across the room, indicating the presences of turrets but you cant be sure of their contents yet. She promised they wouldn't be loaded but you figure there must be something in them if she bothered placing them into the map at all. You turn around just in time to see Orange waving goodbye at you, awkward and rushed before being yanked out of view by the other bot. The door closes and locks behind them.

You make a note to yourself to study those two more. Something about their behavior reminds you of common human mannerisms but since GLaDOS was the one who designed them, you cant help but feel curious about her intentions.

After that, it doesn't take long for you to solve the puzzle. A few noncommittal portals later and some simple placement of a nearby storage cube, and the familiar blue checkmark appears before you. It looks like she's starting you off easy again, having you warm up before raising the bar. Instinct tells you to be careful anyways, and you spend the next two chambers with uninterrupted silence from the intercom. You cant imagine what she's doing the whole time you test, or if she's even watching you, but by the time you hit the fourth chamber and arrive at a slightly more trickier puzzle, her voice comes to life again.

"I almost forgot how good you are at this. I'm going to have to make a few adjustments." You watch as the map slides in and out of itself, collapsing and rearranging walls and structures making what could have been a fairly straightforward map into one that will take you at least an hour to solve. Solve it you do though, and make your way through the rest of them until five chambers later, you notice the elevator sending you down instead of ascending in its usual pattern.

"What? No, stop, that's not the coordinates I input--"

You're startled by the surprise in GLaDOS's voice but it's clipped immediately and the lights in the elevator flicker quickly, one, two, three interrupted circuits of fluorescent before steadying themselves again. You feel your pulse quicken. This is obviously not standard protocol. This, you decide in a mere matter of seconds, is a little more your style.

When the doors open up again you are back in old Aperture. The rusted pipes to the right of you creak meekly as if welcoming you back, and you cant help but blanch a bit when you remember just how long you were stuck down here the first time around. You step out into the open, feeling the gravel crunch below you, and you're digging through your memory to see if anything looks familiar. Nothing rings a bell. But given how enormous this entire facility is, maybe that shouldn't come as a surprise to you. You take only a few more steps forward before you hear her again, bursting through the speakers as if to make up for her lack of presence.

"How lovely. It seems there are still some bugs in the system. My administrative power in those second-rate chambers down there seem questionable at best. Investigate the matter."

You raise an eyebrow at this.

"...did I stutter?" You raise another eyebrow. A long stretch of silence yawns before you two and you're more than happy to wait it out. If there's one skill you've sharpened to a finite point during your stay here, it's been patience. She sighs, a resounding metallic drawl that almost sounds melodic. "Investigate the matter _please._ " She says the last part so painfully you're tempted to pretend you didn't hear it, but still, you suppose these things take time. Having GLaDOS act a little more human is like watching a blind cat try to find its way out of a paper bag.

A half-hearted shrug is your only reply but that seems to placate her, and for a small moment, you imagine she feels a bit of relief. Looking back into the bleak emptiness of an abandoned Aperture, you don't spare a moment of hesitation before heading towards the massive platform. At this point, there's little that scares you and even less you've got to lose. 

It was time to do some reckless investigation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so here goes an attempt at Portal fic! will be attempting to play with the fun concept of neural handshakes and drifting from Pacific Rim. pffft welp, we'll see how it goes.


	2. Chapter 2

In Aperture Science, there is no sense of time. 

The objects, artifacts, devices, and machines remain static almost always, frozen until some individual in the facility flips a switch, sends a signal, or otherwise makes clear an intention to engage with their surroundings. 

It's always unnerved you how each room, each chamber, felt freshly minted and prepared for you upon your arrival. Stale almost, with its prepackaged perfection and veneer. It was as if the test had been made for you and only you, having waited all this time for your arrival. 

Old Aperture is different in that sense. While some of the test chambers are still intact and trigger their systemized, automatic responses, the stripped walls, exposed circuitry, and hints of decay prove to you that you were not the test subject they expected. 

It is the wrong place and the wrong time. 

Admittedly, you feel more comfortable here in the forgotten folds of the laboratory. Not only because GLaDOS' influence is limited, but because there's something valuable about the remnants and mementos of human life you find scattered about. People lived here once, people occupied these places, people constructed these spaces, and people walked down these halls. Not just test subjects. 

You don't know how long you've been wandering the facility now, but every so often, a burst of static trickles in through the intercom followed by GLaDOS' voice. She directs you, curt and to the point, telling you to take the third corridor to your left, the staircase to the right, and to flip the panel and activate the moving platform across from you. You follow her instruction, trying not to think too much about notions of free will and individual sovereignty. 

One thing you've come to discover about your new physiology is that upon long stretches of calm in your mind, you are now able to detect a low thrumming noise from the back of your head. Location-wise, it feels as if its emanating from the midpoint of space between your ears. It's not terribly loud but it _is_ consistent, rarely dropping or rising even the slightest in pitch or in frequency. For some reason, you imagine a very small turbine or motor spinning rapidly in the new-found machinery of your skull, and the thought of it is both unsettling and curiously impressive. At times, the sound of it is even calming, vaguely drone-like and similar to the low octave beat of your pulse as a piece of auditory evidence that you are still a living, breathing thing. 

You find this to be increasingly important and reassuring to remember, given how constantly you are surrounded by things that are not alive. 

Quietly you fear the day where you, like the painted white hydraulic pumps and pulleys, might become just another extension of Aperture. Another nameless cog in this meaningless (surely forgotten) husk of a research facility. 

"Try the door on your left." You open it to reveal a darkened office with huge desktops, monitors, and abandoned workstations. Like every other room you've encountered so far, it's covered in outdated wood panels and carpeted floors. You flip the lights on and the overheads spit weakly, as if exhausted by the sheer effort of having to work after so many years of neglect. "One of these computers should have a disc on them with the data I'm looking for, and if someone did their job right back then, it should grant administrative access to the control panels in that part of the facility." You're not really sure you want that, but you keep that thought more or less to yourself. What you do instead though is examine your surroundings with a bit more care. 

You pull out a drawer from the table before you, revealing some crumpled up notes, paperclips, scraps of old documents, forms, and a plastic yo-yo. Underneath a manilla folder, you find the torn edge of a photograph peeking out. Pulling it, you lift up a faded color print. It's a family of three, you realize, comprising of a father with a handle-bar mustache, a woman in a floral print dress, and a small boy in a baseball cap and a bucktoothed smile. While the picture itself strikes you as incredibly awkward, with them positioned so uncomfortably side to side and angled in a way that reminds you of pop-band covers, they also look remarkably...happy. Staring at the photo, you wonder what kind of lives they led. Was it the father who worked here? If so, what did he do? How old was the child? Where did they live? Did they vacation? You run your thumb over some of the creases and would have continued to stitch together the tapestry of their lives had it not been for GlaDOS' voice interrupting you, yet again. 

"What are you doing down there? Just because I can't actually _see_ you since that sad excuse of a lab lacks functioning cameras, it doesn't mean I don't know you've been standing still like a piece of furniture for the past five minutes. I'll have you know your GPS tracking device is still functioning as it should, regardless of how outdated the rest of the machinery there is." 

Briefly you debate standing still for even longer just to spite her. Hell, you could even set up camp here, stay the whole night. Except you realize that at some point, you'd need to return upstairs to be charged. A necessary routine that will come to rule you in more ways than one. You smile somewhat bitterly and after a moment of thought, fold the photograph carefully and pocket it. You're not sure what you're going to do with it or what the use might be in keeping it, but there's something depressing about returning it to its abandoned desk, where the person who once valued it is so obviously absent. 

You rummage around more, turning on computers to check the contents of their drives and to see if they might have the disk she's asking you to find. It's obvious you could choose to be uncooperative, but some part of you feels tired at the thought. Resistance just for resistance sake seems silly at the moment, especially when you have no end-game in mind. It's not hopelessness that's tugging at you, it's more like a contemplative calm and moment of rest. It feels as if the only thing worth doing is to wait and absorb the temperature of the new waters you tread, to see where the current goes, and to judge later how to best act. Now that the rush of moving forward has more or less worn off and your relationship with GLaDOS has evolved into something more complex and binding, you realize that you're being forced to act more careful and wary than ever. While some part of you hoped that you could fight, tooth and nail, just like you always had, you realize now that fighting is counter-productive. Who else would be able to charge your life-sustaining machinery? Yours was a psychological case worthy of a whole thesis.

Finally, you come across a station that spits out a large glossy disc when you turn it on. It's comically huge and thin, almost the size of your head and reflective under the greenish lights above you. The lounge music that GLaDOS started playing through the speakers as a sarcastic allusion to how slowly you are working cuts off abruptly. 

"Well, I have to say, even I didn't expect you to be so bad at sleuthing. When you finally _do_ find the disc, feed it into the large monitor at the center of the room. The input passcode is: 1042. But please, no rush...it's not as if you only have 90 minutes left before you're due for another charge." 

Wonderful. In lieu of the usual cake and deadly neurotoxins, it seemed charging sessions would be the new flavor of bribe and threat. The disc in your hand suddenly seems remarkably breakable to you. You banish the thought after a moment of careful regard and pop it into the monitor, settling into the leather, swivel chair before it. As the screen comes to life, you input the password and watch as strips of binary flash before they're replaced by a data stream divided into two: Administrative Control Panel and Technical Infrastructure. While you are debating on what to do next, a file name catches your eye. 

**'GLaDOS_v2: CYBR_PROTOTYPE://blueprint'**

A GLaDOS prototype? This is the first you've heard of this, and then it dawns on you that this old facility must contain all of the plans and research for her development and implementation prior to the lab's abandonment. It's almost shocking to remember that GLaDOS was not always a part of Aperture, that she was in fact created and installed and that because of that, there were probably pieces of information that could tell you about how she was made. Or, as the title of the document before you implies, how _else_ she could have been made. Tentatively, you access the folder, and the screen floods with graphs, data points, diagrams, and blocks of text. 

The information floors you. 

Apparently the developers at Aperture had contemplated several iterations for how GLaDOS might physically manifest. A chassis was the final outcome, but as the image on the monitor rotates a complete 360 degrees, it's clear they were also inspired by more...human aesthetics. While still obviously a mock up, the depiction of the cyborg model is eery in its combination of artificial and organic parts. The shape and the form is familiar, obviously that of a woman, but there was apparently no interest in replicating human life beyond that. There is no silicone layer of skin or inclusion of hair-like fibers. The design is sleek, noted as intentionally monochromatic with indicated positions of red and yellow where the LED's signals would be. There are facial features implemented into the design and minute panels where strips of circuitry lay carefully hidden by polished sheets of metal and aluminum. Next to the model is a profile picture of a young woman, brunette with glasses, smiling calmly back at you. The shape of her eyes, nose, and lips tell you that she is the inspirational model for how the cyborg was designed, and it also doesn't take long for you to guess who she might be. 

Your head pounds at the possibilities this yields. Could it be possible that in exploring this prototype, the researchers tested ways for creating a cyborg that could run on minimal or no charge? Some sort of self-sustaining battery? Was is possible that perhaps somewhere in this mass of data, lay an answer for how you might escape your codependent reliance on GLaDOS? You're not sure, and part of you is doubtful that scientists and engineers from such a long time ago could have been anywhere close to solving a problem GLaDOS implied was near impossible, but this is finally a glimmer of hope worth grabbing onto so grab onto it you do. 

Quickly, you pull open a drawer beside you and pick a small disc from a case that's labeled as empty data discs and burn all the information about the prototype onto it. Thankfully it's not a complicated procedure, but the silence from the intercom has you slightly on edge. You know you don't have much time left before she shuttles you out of here, and so the minute it finishes burning, you fold it carefully into a yellow envelope and tuck it safely along with the photo from earlier. You're not sure when you'll be able to look at it all more carefully, but at least now you have a copy of it.

Now, back to business. 

You click into the Administrative Control Panel. The screen flashes black and white for a moment before powering down all together. You stiffen up immediately and narrow your eyes when you hear a familiar voice. 

"Hey, Cave Johnson here. Looks like you're trying to access the Administrative Control Panel. Not so fast, buddy, just who the hell do you think you are? Haha, nah I'm just pulling your leg. If you're in this part of the facility, chances are I'm paying you way too much for your job and that you're probably certified one way or another to be sniffing around this garbage. Anyways, listen, this yuppie over here tells me this stuff's real sensitive information. So sensitive in fact, that even a brainiac, grade-A certified nerd like you cant get your grabby little hands on it. So here's the lowdown: if you really _really_ need to access this thing, you're going to have to run over to the IT division and ask them for a favor or two. I heard they like oatmeal cookies. Flavorless babies, the lot of them. Anyways, thats it. Cave, over and out." 

Ah, of course. You almost forgot about Cave Johnson. GLaDOS lets out a frustrated noise. You're startled out of your chair, you forgot that she could listen in on what's happening. 

"Why is it that anything worth doing is never easy? Is it so wrong to expect things to ever work as they should? Ridiculous. I'm sending an elevator down for you now. I'm going to figure this out sooner or later." 

You can hear the hiss and the swift arrival of a new elevator from down the hall. You have no idea how she summons these things, but now that you've helped her map out this area, you realize at least the next time you venture down here it wont take nearly as long. As you rise from the chair, you find yourself mildly grateful for once to Cave Johnson and all his eccentricities. He may have just bought you more time and more chances to investigate the matter without GLaDOS' constant surveillance. Down here, you have refuge from her probing eyes and you are not exactly keen on her discovering these files just yet. Just as you're about to step through the door, your world gets momentarily dark. 

As if dipped into a pool of back ink, your peripheral vision swirls and wraps around itself like a drowned piece of fabric. It's a dizzying moment, and that low thrum you had earlier found so comforting and consistent now sounds several notes too high, entirely too frantic and slightly hysterical in its irregular frequencies. 

It's over as soon as it began though and after you screw your eyes shut and open them again, your vision straightens out. The light balances out, no longer bleached and over-exposed. Slowly you are reminded of how the red lights in turret's dim and whine down when they lose their charge or otherwise terminate. You can feel a thin layer of cold sweat between your brows and you brush it off as you step into the elevator, immediately whisked away up, up, and back into GLaDOS' chamber. 

When the elevator opens and spits you back out into the familiar whiteness, you are presented with a chair in the center of the room. Her chassis is as large and as massive as you remember, and it swings to face you as her optic focuses on your face. It's incredibly invasive the way the lens shrinks and whirrs as it's locked onto you, but you imagine she is trying to determine any critical differences from the last time she saw you. When she's seemingly satisfied, she addresses you and a light clicks on above the chair, illuminating it and reminding you somewhat of an unglamorous throne. 

"Well, we don't have all day. Contrary to popular belief, I can't be expected to do _everything_ around here." 

You're sure there are several smart answers for that but considering how she's the one who's about to administer your charge and could more or less easily go a little...overboard, you choose to keep your thoughts to yourself. It's not much of a new tactic anyways. You step into the chair and try not to be too startled when it reclines immediately, leaving you almost flat on your back and starting straight up at the bright fluorescent hexagonal light above you. You can hear the clicking of gears somewhere underneath the chair and before you can piece together what's happening, restraints clamp down on your wrists and ankles and a small coil is probing by the back of your head. It slides neatly into the embedded port you had entirely forgotten about.

For a moment, there's nothing. 

Then suddenly, as if punched right in between the eyes, you gasp as an immediate rush of adrenaline fills you. Your heart is beating impossibly fast and very quickly your senses are feeding you all sorts of strange information. The misfiring of your nerves keeps warning you that you are burning up, no, freezing, no, sweating and clammy and-- well, it's hard to address those when the pronounced flavor of alkyd pumps through you and feels as if it's soaking your mouth. At this rate, you cant even tell if your eyes are open or closed because your vision is feeding you the same thing regardless, and that is a spotty, blotched cloud of multi-colored dots. Fuzzy ones, at that. You think your arms are shaking a little, and you realize belatedly this must be why the chair had locked you into place shortly after you sat down. The restraints on your wrists are doing a great job in keeping you from clawing at your own face. You had read about seizures, once, and you think somewhat dumbly, that maybe you are experiencing one now. 

Somewhere within the mass hysteria of your own body fighting itself, your ears pick up on a strange stream of sound. It's hard to notice it at first, because the overwhelming pounding of your rabbit-like heartbeat is incredibly distracting, but eventually you are able to pick up on that strand of noise until it sharpens itself. It's a voice, a human voice. You think it's speaking to you quickly, startlingly so even, but it's hard to make out exactly what it's saying. Just as this is happening, your vision start to blur and darken, similar to how it did moments ago when you were down below. You blink rapidly, trying to hone onto this strange auditory hallucination (or what you're deeming _must_ be a hallucination) but you almost lose your cool when you realize that the fuzzy, multi-colored dots in your vision have suddenly been replaced by something else. The voice intensifies until suddenly, it burns out like a wick, extinguished completely. You are no longer in GLaDOS's laboratory. No, you are now back in Old Aperture, but the panels you had seen just hours ago are not caked in dust but are spotless and polished, shining under the too-bright lights from above. You turn to your side and there are three scientists, all men, dressed in lab coats and looking at you curiously. One of them is speaking to you but no sound leaves from his mouth, in fact, you cant hear anything anymore, only the fast-rushing beat of your own heartbeat. Panicked, you watch his face, trying to read his lips. "Caroline," he seems to say, "it's going to be--" it's hard to tell what the rest of his sentence will be because immediately, over all sense of the rational, you feel a sort of righteous anger and fear grab you from the pit of your stomach and throttle you madly. Before you know what you're doing, you're thrashing in your seat, another chair that has clamped you down, though it is far more restraining, far more merciless. 

You gasp, swallowing angry breaths of air, and your vision whitens into a pure titanium before the colors of Old Aperture swim away. The taste of metal is still drenching your tongue and your fingers are curled around the sides of the chair. Your senses feel sharper than they did before, you feel you can see clearer, hear better, and something inside of you feels rested as if you had taken a long nap. The trickles of visual information are still streaming through your mind though, and before you can begin to pick at the mess, you hear GLaDOS, more furious with you than usual. 

"What was that?!" 

You're snapped out of your reverie. The locks on the side of the chair release themselves, and you immediately check your wrists for any lasting bruises. You felt you were thrashing wildly, and still, the fear that had so gripped you moments before is still rattling in your bones. If anything, you were hoping _she_ would tell you. If not a private hallucination you had all to yourself, you could only safely assume it was something she intentionally gave you along with the charge. The outrage in her voice tells you otherwise. 

"How did you--why did...." 

It's almost nice to hear her so shocked. Obviously, that hallucination (or was it a memory? An experience?) is not something she had intended to share with you. You're inclined now to look at it more carefully. Hadn't GLaDOS planned to delete all remnants of Caroline? Was it possible there was residual information, leftover data that couldn't be wiped? You stare defiantly up at her, as if you had every right to these answers as she did. 

The elevator doors open again.

"Get out." 

You're a little alarmed at her sudden brusqueness. Though if anything, you realize that GLaDOS is probably more shocked by the deviation from her usual control and the mention of Caroline is sure to seal the deal, at least in the game of upsetting her. You rise and head for the elevator, mind churning over what just happened. The elevator shuttles you down to another testing chamber, where you proceed without a second thought to dismantle the puzzles she had made while you were away. 

You realize that while you had thought you had pulled up all of Aperture's dirty laundry, there are still things hidden, still mysteries waiting to be unturned. This strange memory of Caroline in combination with your newfound information regarding the cyborg prototypes somehow emboldens you. For once, you feel as if maybe, just maybe, it can be you who decides how this pans out from here on forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wrote this a while back but only recently tidied it up. hard to say if I can finish this but I'll give it a shot, haha.


	3. Chapter 3

For the first night in a long time, you dream.

It is fragmented by the time you awaken, dissolving into the foam-filled chemical sea of your mind as quickly as cotton candy in an open mouth. For a few precious moments though, you hold the imprint of saturated viridian grass and the chatter and cheer of many people. It was a celebration of some kind, and in your dream you could recognize the buildup of your own excitement mingling alongside those around you. There were smears of bright color and noises of well-wishes and distant laughter, and they fade softly in the chamber of your mind. You remember a soothing voice by your head, and how their breath tickled the soft hairs behind your ear. To your dismay, you find that all the sensations and textures recede when you try to pull them closer. They skitter away, just out of your reach. 

By the time you are fully awake and sitting up on your bed, only shadows and faint whispers are left. 

"For an organism that doesn't require a full REM cycle of sleep, you certainly like to indulge." You cringe internally, realizing that the voice of GlaDOS will more or less be the first thing to greet you from now on. You wish to go back to sleep and return to the loud and noisy world of your subconscious. Or was it a memory? You look up to check the display screens for your stats, your face betraying little emotion or hints about what you’re thinking of. While the numbers hold no special meaning to you, it is somehow absurd to realize that every passing function and action of your body is numerically measured and calculated. As you head to the sink to wash your face, you hear the noise of an opening door. It's Blue and Orange again, and they come bearing a package. You stare, no longer inclined to aim your Portal gun at them, but remain wary of their presence. Though they are undoubtedly machines, there is a considerable amount of...personality in the way they interact with the world. A certain bird-like movement and enthusiasm tucked in their thrumming, motorized joints. Blue shoves the package into your arms and Orange begins to gesticulate excitedly with its arms.

It takes you a while to piece together that Orange is attempting to make eating gestures, motioning hands towards its face as if picking up food to chew. You curiously take the offered package and they titter again, appearing to congratulate themselves on a job well done. They leave abruptly, and the door hisses shut behind them.

You shake the box. Whatever it is, it's a tight fit, because it produces little to no rattling. It's fairly thin and rectangular, and you almost expect for GLaDOS to interject with her usual form of unwarranted commentary. Being in Aperture has more or less made you the star of a surreal television series helmed by the world's most deranged and obnoxious director. She doesn't say anything though, and when you tear open the box, you have no idea what to make of the grey-colored cubes before you. They are mottled and tucked inside a white tray, similar to ice cubes in presentation but far more suspicious looking. 

"Yes, do try to contain your excitement. Unfortunately your body still requires nutritional energy to function to any useful degree. I've calculated and crafted the perfect diet for efficient performance with no...excessive repercussions." 

It is then when you realize that yes, the small and uniformly shaped blocks on the tray are meant to be eaten. By you. These unappetizing clods of desaturated matter are an attempt by GLaDOS to make food. More hilariously, this may very well be her first official attempt at cooking. You poke at it warily, half expecting it to combust spontaneously or morph into a radioactive life-form of some kind.

"You're welcome," she finishes dryly. 

You wonder briefly if this might be GLaDOS' way of punishing you for yesterday’s events. Then again, she never required a reason before to make your life more miserable when offered the chance. To hell with it, you have little reason to believe she was planning to kill you now, especially after all that's happened. You reach for a cube, pop it into your mouth, and chew. It tastes as awful as you expected, and you wonder if it's worth asking GLaDOS to remove your taste buds or modify them completely to make them tasteless. You consider it for only a few moments before realizing the ability to identify flavors in all their grotesque or unpleasant variations is still important to you. As an example of a uniquely individual and personal experience, you decide you cant afford to surrender anything else that helps to define who you are.

You stare into the unwavering red dot of the surveillance camera above the television as you eat, slowly withdrawing into your thoughts to distract yourself from the overwhelmingly tactile and unpleasant experience. They are gritty, cold, oddly sour, and mealy. 

"Would it kill you to consume that with your mouth closed? The unseemly gap between your teeth has never looked wider. It's a wonder how that poorly macerated protein isn't falling right through." You pause as if considering her words before standing to move closer to the camera. Mouth open, you bare your teeth and expose the thick layer of dark mush caked over the top row. You smile as open and wide as you can. 

"It's remarkable how you continue to set the bar higher and higher for yourself in being the most indolent test subject in all of recorded science. Honestly. I have the graphs and charts to prove it. Oh, what's this? It appears to be a specially selected sound for Aperture staff to employ when treated to such unwarranted, ape-like behavior."

The sound of dry heaves and violent, aggressive retching fills the room through a tinny set of speakers. It doesn't bother you. It’s nice that you are still able to experience glee from such petty and self-satisfying acts. Life is a small series of victories indeed. 

"Now that we've finished indulging your dull and boring human need for anarchy, it's time to return to work."

 _Work_ , not _testing_. It sounds oddly collaborative when she phrases it that way.

You stand and brush off the crumbs from the nutrition bars. You stretch, hearing the low pop of your muscles. She plays the same jazzy lounge music from when you were down in Old Aperture, signaling her impatience. GLaDOS was really never one for subtlety. You wonder how you ever missed the first clues of her insanity back then. Perhaps you can blame it as a side-effect from the long, uninterrupted coma you endured. For all her jokes about your stunted mental growth, you do admittedly wonder about it from time to time. The door slides open and you climb inside the elevator, wiping your mind blank as she sends you into the gaping maw of Aperture Science. 

 

* * *

 

Down here, it is as quiet and as undisturbed as you remember. She has put you back on the task of retrieving Old Aperture's authorization code. It's a bit of a stretch to think that you would ever find it by digging through abandoned labs and offices, but you'd much rather partake in this sort of mindless activity in a place where you cant be surveilled than to be upstairs in another recorded series of her endless experiments. In a way, her life (if you could call it that) was as meaningless as yours. Rote, sedentary studies for people who have long since passed. Who was even interested in the data she was collecting? What value was there in the tests that you completed or the hypothesis and conclusions that she drew about you? It was tragic, really. The two of you, trapped in this carcass of a research institute, running the same cycles and routines again and again. 

You wander the halls, wondering if and where you might be successful in finding more data about the cyborg model you discovered. The possibility of a long-term, self-charging battery for a sustainable life outside of Aperture was the only thing you could put your faith in. Frankly, you didn't have the time or the energy to entertain the possibility that it might not exist. You're also painfully aware of your lack of a real plan for how to escape this place in one piece. If you did find it, and if you did make it out alive, what kind of world could even be waiting for you outside of these walls? 

It is oddly quiet on her end. You wonder if she is running maintenance checks again, and if she ever pauses to dwell in her thoughts. With the cores removed, does she still reminisce? Does she know how to feel regret, or to remember something fondly? According to her vengeful words of murder when you woke her from her forced shutdown, you can at least assume that she feels rage. Possibly fear, too. Your hands falter as you skim the top of tabbed folders. You have never given much thought before to the matter of GLaDOS' consciousness. Things feel different now, and you realize it is mainly because the shred of artificiality she had imbued you with has inevitably tugged you closer to her shade of existence. You grimace, feeling once again at the mercy of those around you. 

There is a metal cabinet that wont yield when you pull it, and you don't hesitate to use a piece of metal debris to swing at the small, rusted lock that holds it shut. After a few whacks, it clatters to the ground and you pull it open. It is mostly empty, save for a beige folder. You reach for it and feel a hard square tucked inside a handful of papers. It's another CD, and the corner of the paper underneath it reveals a clipped photograph. The picture is crooked and positioned right above a series of carefully printed graphs and tables. The photo reveals a face you recognize immediately as the same woman from before. Her clear gaze is unmistakable, and the dark frame of her glasses bisects all the caution and trepidation behind her eyes into two perfect rectangles. 

 _Caroline_. You carefully scan the contents of the page, and notice that a large chunk of the information seems to be identical to the information you discovered from the last CD. Your eyes pause at one sentence, scribbled with blue ink on the left margin. 

**_Incompatible with L4EV-0717, must try alternative energy source (potentially thru AP mainframe? Meet w/Sasha from ARCH-ENG div to discuss details)_ **

You collect the folder in its entirety and move back down the halls to another room, stopping in front of the same desk that held the family photo and plastic yo-yo. You had the hindsight to remember to leave behind the photo and burned CD, so as to protect them from an inevitable destruction inside the emancipation grill. You've repurposed the desk as your own personal storage unit, and you can't help but draw a sense of satisfaction in having a space to claim as your own. You collect the disc from last time and move briskly, not wanting to give GLaDOS any reason to be suspicious of your movement, or lack thereof. 

With both discs in hand, you walk over to another room with functioning computers. You prepare to crosscheck the information if you discover anything new. As you sit to boot one up, her voice returns. 

"After the unexpected surprise of yesterday, I've been doing some research...." 

You smile thinly, because you have been too, in your own odd way. Although speaking bluntly, research from GLaDOS has never led to anything favorable for you. She continues, the clip of her voice as sharp as ever. You are only half listening, eyes busy absorbing the contents of the information loading before you. The new disc has far more data than you anticipated, and it reveals a series of drawings. They appear to be batteries or power units of various types, and there is at least fifteen iterations that differ in size, shape, and function. It's a rather large 3D file, and while it's dense enough to make the computer lag and stutter, it's not terribly clear in explaining where and how any of them might be structured to fit inside a GLaDOS or cyborg prototype. As you rotate the objects around on the screen, you tune back in to her voice just in time to catch the peculiarity of what she says next. 

"...so simply put, the little show from your charging session may not have been the last." You pause in your studies of the drawings, hand still hovering over the scroll button on the outdated, dusty control panel of the screen. "It appears that the mainframe may be...compromised, lets say, by an unexpected bug." 

A bug? You don't honestly believe this is another thinly veiled insult about you, and before you can wrack your brain for a clearer understanding of what she means, she continues right where she left off. "Consider it an annoying side effect from the transmission of electrical energy and impulse that a charge comprises of. I'm not too surprised. You are, after all, a beta model.” Ah, so she was trying to say it was your fault. She lets that sentence sit with you, and you suppose she expects for you to feel indignant. 

You are very good at not giving her that type of satisfaction though. Honestly, it doesn't bother you too much, this possibility of re-experiencing the flashbacks or memories or whatever they were. If anything, it seemed GLaDOS was the one most irked by the whole situation. To you, it was but a small deviation from the norm, and deviations have long since failed to ruffle you. You wait though, wondering if she's about to offer more of an explanation. 

"132 minutes until your next charge. How does it feel to waste another whole day? Pity how Blue and Orange cant maintain a connection to the main server in that hellhole of a lab. You better not be ambling around like a moron and wasting my time." 

You sigh and start burning a backup copy of the disc. Given the size of the place, it feels like you'll be stuck for a while collecting scraps of information in piecemeal fashion. Still, it's good to have something to work towards. While placing everything back into the drawer of the desk, you glimpse at the family photo again and the three faces beam up at you, completely unfazed and frozen in time. For a moment, you wonder about your own family. Surely, you must have had one…a mother, a father, and perhaps even a sibling? Would they still be alive now, given your undefined period of time in stasis? The possibility of your own family existing somewhere disconcerts you, and you push the thought far back into the recess of your mind. It’s somehow too much of a fantasy to entertain, and every reminder of the huge gap in your memory still makes you stiff and short of breath.  

You explore the labs for another estimated forty minutes, assigning visual markers to keep track of spaces you've visited and searched. You don’t tire of discovering the odd belongings left behind. Rubix cubes, tacky tourist mugs, cheap paperweights, and folded origami are a few of the most common type of paraphernalia. Whenever you find something particularly charming, you mark it to add later to your drawer. Eventually, you climb back into the elevator. You are not particularly eager to re-experience the nauseating dip from low energy again. You feel a light, buzzing ache in the space behind your kneecap and speculate that you may have walked more than seven miles today. The pain is not terrible, and you redistribute the weight on your legs just to dip through the spectrum of discomfort. The whirring you hear from the undefinable, invisible spot between your ears continues its unbroken hum. It is a dedicated presence that follows you in all your waking hours. The doors close, and shuttle you away.

 

* * *

 

You are back in GLaDOS’ main chamber. You're not sure what else to call it, as this is the one room where she seems too fit most as a solid being. The chair is waiting for you, and you wonder what will happen to you this time. 

"Yes, please, do continue to move at a glacial pace. Don't let _me_ interrupt and dictate your unique sense of preference and individuality." 

That one stings you because of the true lack of information regarding your own history and life. It's absence has never stopped pressing against you in a sore and awkward way. Other than a slight twitch of the brow, you try to remain as expressionless as you can while seating yourself. The metal of the chair is freezing, and goosebumps snake their way up your arms and back. You shut your eyes and the chair reclines, with the two cuffs popping shut to encircle your wrists. Inhaling deeply, you become overly aware of the firmness and solidity of the chair beneath you, and with a hiss and click, she plugs back into you. 

Your entire body is tense with anticipation, waiting for the shower of electricity and flood of vivid sensation. Gripping the armrest as firmly as you can, you deliberate over the best way to prepare yourself. The flurry doesn't come though, and instead you experience a sensation eerily similar to being dipped into tepid water. Your chest tightens and you feel a drop of temperature in your extremities that moves swiftly upward. Your head becomes heavier and heavier, until suddenly you lose all sense of gravity and weight. You feel like you're floating. The dark fade of your vision is gradual, and swaths of black dissolve and chew at the edges of your sight until it swallows everything. Your ears pop and you can no longer tell if your eyes are open or shut. 

It’s quiet. You float in darkness for what feels like a long time until suddenly you are not. 

Color and light trickle back in, accompanied by the sound of rustling fabric, and now you are sitting upright and feeling overly warm. A drop of sweat rolls down the side of your temple, and there is a hand touching your bare back. The skin contact is cool, and you feel a flood of gratitude as the hand begins to rub small, comforting circles. There are words spoken, and this time you can tell someone is talking because the fuzz of their voice becomes just barely audible. You can’t seem to make sense of it though, and the volume saws in and out of your hearing range. It feels like your ears are stuffed with cotton, and your mouth is unbearably dry. You struggle and attempt to say something. The person behind you moves away, removing their hand from your back, and you want to protest at the lack of contact. They rise, and before you is a woman with dark hair, even darker eyes, and a worried expression that creases her whole face. She touches your forehead, and her hand is massive against your head. It is only then when you realize how small you are. She is saying something to you, with her eyes big and full of concern. Reaching out to a table beside her, she collects an empty glass and turns to leave. You reach out, seeing the surreal sight of your own small hand, and you try to call out. You are making the motion with your mouth but there is no real sound, only a warbled and confused attempt at communication. You keep trying. She leaves. You try louder, with more effort.

You are still crying out as your vision dips away, this time like static being stripped from a screen.  

Aperture reveals itself in bits and pieces, through fragmented swirls of white that expand and contract while you thrash in your seat, head whipping against the firm frames of the chair. Your throat is hoarse and it hurts you, and as the structure and shape of the chamber take a more solid form, you hear the echo and repeat of a strange, keening call. 

"Mom, mom..." 

The utterance is low, cracked, soft and broken all at once, and upon the last weak murmur, you realize with distinct horror and surprise that it came from you. Drenched in sweat, the temperature of the room feels inexplicably frigid, and you release a desperate and choked breath as your involuntary muscles surge back to life. You barely notice the cuffs releasing you, as you are too preoccupied with regulating your breath to keep from choking. Already the memory is starting to disintegrate, and you can no longer recall the quality or color of the woman's eyes without doubting yourself. As you start to collect your bearings, you lift your arms to bury the heels of your hands into your eyes, wanting to rub away the sudden soreness. You touch wetness, and you are surprised to discover tears. They distort your vision into a fish-eye perspective before you manage to rub it away. 

Sitting there, you experience a rare moment of vulnerability. You have stripped yourself of clothes, faced many an injury, and completed all manner of personal and private activities in the presence of GLaDOS, but somehow, at this moment in time, you feel exposed and raw in a way you've never been before. 

It is not fair that she saw a memory you can only think to claim as your own, from a life long ago. You swallow thickly and helplessly feel _everything_ , and you wonder if the tears somehow unlocked a dimension of emotion that you worked hard to keep shut. 

"So you speak.” It is blunt, observational, matter-of-fact, and devoid of noticeable affectation. 

You want to resume your strike of silence, but know deep down that its strength and effectiveness has been altered forever. Bitterness consumes you, and the emotion is so strong you can almost taste it, acidic and sharp in your mouth. You almost dare her to comment on the memory, and you can already predict the spike in blood pressure if she thinks to make a joke of it.  

“We’re done now. Tomorrow, we’ll try something new.” 

She’s speaking vaguely and that’s never a good thing, but when you hear the doors of the elevator open, you rise quickly from the seat and move straight towards them. You don’t want to stay here, you don’t want to theorize, you don’t want to _listen_ to her and you certainly don’t want to _talk._ No time is wasted as  the doors swiftly take you away and open only to reveal a new testing chamber. You turn off everything inside your head and try your best to run on auto-pilot. 

Sleep that night fights you, and you waste hours and hours laying in bed, memorizing each and every crack, crevice, and speck of dirt on the monochrome ceiling and off-white walls. The mumbled fuzz of the woman’s words lap at the shores of your mind, and you sit stranded on a small island, only to feel each delicate grain of sand slip through your hands. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hammered out another chapter...! I wasn't sure if this fic would continue but somehow, here we are. happy holidays! : )


End file.
